As computer systems have proliferated throughout society, and network and Internet access continues to expand, users are confronted with an increasing amount of electronic documents. Electronic documents can contain information on any subject, from newspaper articles to television listings. Due to the essentially infinite amount of information available to be included in electronic form, the size of an electronic document can vary greatly.
Some electronic documents are small, only requiring a modest amount of time to read. If a user is looking for a particular section of an electronic document, browsing through the document also requires only a modest amount of time. However, as the length of the document increases, reading and browsing time likewise increases. For documents that are the equivalent of several written pages (e.g., ten or more written pages), reading and browsing can be unwieldy and inefficient.
Unfortunately, for medium to large documents, current browsing techniques do not provide efficient tools for scanning and browsing. Furthermore, if the document is only viewed in a small portion of the screen, due to screen space needs of other applications or portions of the same application, the viewing of medium and large documents is difficult.
One example of a medium or large sized electronic document is a datasheet for use in designing, configuring and programming electronic devices. A datasheet is a document that provides technical details for peripherals used with a microprocessor. Depending on the complexity of the peripheral, a datasheet can vary from tens of pages to thousands of pages.
One conventional technique used in electronic document viewing is the predetermined placing of embedded anchors throughout the document at the beginning of sections of the document. Several document formats, in particular HTML and XML, provide for supplying embedded anchors throughout an electronic document. A listing of the anchors is presented at the beginning of the document. By interacting with one of the anchors, the browsing application scrolls the document to the corresponding anchor. However, if a user desires to go to a second section of the document, the user must either scroll back to the top of the document to where the listing of anchors is located or browse the document manually. Requiring a user to go back to the beginning of a document is time consuming, and can be frustrating. Furthermore, for use in viewing datasheets, this technique can be particularly inefficient. Microcontroller designers typically must read several sections of several datasheets in order to select the optimal peripheral. Requiring a user to scroll to the top of a document several times per document is very ineffective in providing a microcontroller designer with the tools needed to select peripherals.
Another conventional technique used in electronic document viewing is to provide a contents window adjacent to the electronic document. The contents window has links to embedded anchors throughout the electronic document. By interacting with a link, the browsing application scrolls the document to the appropriate anchor. However, a contents window requires a substantial amount of screen space. In a number of applications requiring the use of medium or large electronic documents, screen space is at a premium, and allocating a portion of the screen space for a contents window is undesirable. Particularly, in design tools requiring the viewing of multiple windows, available screen space is at a minimum.